Page 107 of Magical Mayhem

“You plan to invite the storm,” he murmured.

“I plan to schedule it for the afternoon and serve tea,” I said. “We’re not mice scurrying in the walls. We’re Stonewick.”

A laugh slipped from him that was raw, incredulous, and warm. It rang quietly in the gray air, and I tucked it away greedily like a charm.

“By moon and marrow… I can’t believe your strength.” He paused, and the humor thinned into something softer. “I can’t believe your resilience.”

“Must be a wolf saying.”

He smiled.

“That just means I’m too stubborn to go down,” I said, trying for lightness and almost making it.

He didn’t let me deflect.

“No,” Keegan said. “It means the Academy chose right.” He swallowed hard. “Now I fully understand why it chose you.”

I felt the words like a warm hand between my shoulder blades, holding me upright. A part of me wanted to look down, to change the subject, to joke about how the Academy also chose Twobble to run tea errands and that surely counted against its judgment. But I didn’t. Not this time. I let the praise land. Then I breathed around the strange, glowing ache it left.

“Good,” I said, softer than I meant to. “Because I need you to believe it, too.”

We stood there a moment as the clatter and murmur of the courtyard shifted behind us, and groups formed and instructors began to guide students to the edges.

Keegan watched them all, and I watched him, and in that tiny sliver of peace, I let myself remember the kiss in his room. The heat and tenderness, the way his hand trembled when he pulled me closer like a man clinging to something solid.

“You shouldn’t be out of bed,” I said again, quieter.

“You shouldn’t be in a storm,” he answered. “And yet here we both are.”

“Fair.”

“Where’s Twobble and Skonk?” he asked.

I froze, knowing they were with Gideon.

“Who knows with those two?”

He leaned his weight very slightly toward me, not touching, but close enough that his warmth breached the cool.

“What you said out loud,” he added, “about turning weakness into strength, about making Malore watch us do it.”

I smiled. “It wasn’t just for show.”

“I know.”

He didn’t say I was brave. He didn’t call me reckless. He didn’t tell me to stop. He only stood with me, and sometimes that is the loudest speech love knows how to make.

The Academy thrummed under us, low and pleased, like a cat purring against a boot.

Across the courtyard, Twobble marched past in a borrowed prefect sash three sizes too big and barked commands.

“Form an orderly line! And if anyone steals my muffin, may your toes itch forever.” A cluster of students giggled; one of the sprites, scandalized, hurled a sugar cube at his head. It bounced off his sparse hair. He looked personally offended and then pocketed it for later.

The world tilted toward ordinary for a heartbeat, and I let it. I let the ordinary be a spell in itself.

But who was watching Gideon?

“What you said about destiny,” Keegan murmured. “Do you believe it? Truly?”